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Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

Posted by michael on from the star-gazing dept.

fejikso writes "Space Daily and the BBC announce the coming of the annual Perseid meteor shower, and forecasters say it could be unusually good. The cosmic spectacle is produced by the debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. When the shower peaks, by August 12, sky watchers can expect to see dozens, possibly even hundreds, of meteors per hour."

10 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Re:seconds per meteor by Ayaress · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article says "as many as 200 meteors per hour", so:

    200 meteors/3600 seconds = 1 meteor/18 seconds

    So roughly 18 seconds per meteor. The reason they use per hour is that with something so random, the time between any two is wildly variable, and you need a large sample to get accurate rates. Just some statistical ass-covering, I guess.

  2. Re:Actual shower times? by Ayaress · · Score: 5, Informative

    The times are local time - wherever you are. The shower runs 24-7 for several days. Just go out at the darkest time of night and hope there aren't clouds.

  3. Re:Actual shower times? by Ted+Cabeen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Looking around more, it looks like 2am local is the time that the earth is heading directly into the cloud, so that's when they peak. Weird. Still, an idea of when they'll stop and start would have been nice.

  4. Re:Actual shower times? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    that would be YOUR time zone... best light conditions. During meteor showers such as this you would see them 24/hours a day if not for daylight...

  5. Re:Actual shower times? by Chuck1318 · · Score: 5, Informative

    While the shower goes on for several days, the peak, when we go through a filament of material, is August 12, 09:20 UT (what used to be Greenwich time). With daylight savings time, that will be 2:20am here in California.

  6. Big City by eingram · · Score: 3, Informative

    I live in a big metropolitan area (DFW), and two years ago during the Leonids, I had to drive about an hour and a half out to see them really well (there was also a full moon during the shower, which sucked). So I suggest if you're in a big city, head for the country.

    This should be a pretty good show, though. While we won't have a new moon (different from full moon) on the 12th, it'll be damn close. Plus, in this area, the moon will be below the horizon until around 3:30am. I can't wait (and I'm sure I'll be a zombie at work the next day, too)!

  7. Re:Great... by DustMagnet · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've found Infrared Satellite images the best for predicting night time viewing in the near future.

    I'm in the clear, but I'm too busy to skip sleep over this.

    --
    'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
  8. Gimme something bigger by ttsalo · · Score: 2, Informative
    Couple of years ago I saw a meteor that was big enough and close enough to see pieces breaking off it. (And it lit up the landscape too, for a second.) These tiny-streaks-in-the-sky just haven't been able to impress me much after that.

    --

    --
    If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
  9. NASA Fluxtimator by Chuck1318 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The NASA website has a Fluxtimator that predicts the meteor flux (meteors per hour) for various cities around the world during the night of August 11-12. It will also work for the Leonid shower in November. It looks like the peak is fairly sharp, and drops off quickly thereafter.

  10. Dark Sky Locator by Chuck1318 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The International Dark-Sky Association has a locator for finding the places near your location in the US with least light pollution.